THAT'S THE END OF THAT CHAPTER...

     Back around Christmastime in 2004, I bought a Whitman coin collecting board for Lincoln Cents. It is the second book in what is probably now a four book series covering the years 1941-1974.

     I started filling it with cents found from circulation wondering just how long it would take me to do. I was primarily interested in the 51 varieties of Wheat Cents of this book (1941-1958) over the later-date Memorial Cents (1959-2008), the latter of which I held to a higher collecting standard (they still had to have some mint luster).
     For the Wheat Cents, any find would do though I was not above replacing those found with better examples when they came along. For most of these coins, I did find at least two over the course of this experiment.

     My first coin was, found on December 26, 2004, was dated 1942 and on November 20, 2014, I was able to fill the last hole in that book with a 1955-S.

     Its condition was surprisingly new but then, perhaps I ought not have been so surprised. Reading over the years has told me that many people hoarded this particular cent as a memento of the closing San Francisco mint (a cost-cutting move back in 1955). The only other coin minted in San Francisco that year was the dime but cents are cheaper so they were the coin of choice for hoarding. Also there was a speculative craze going on at the time that manifested in collectors/dealers/speculators holding rolls of newly released coins in the hopes that their value would appreciate. I believe it got kicked off with the low-mintage 1950-D nickel of which about half the total production was believed to be hoarded in uncirculated condition.
     Authors of articles who lived during the time of this coin's release anecdotally relayed that they had never received one of these coins in their change, being forced to buy one at a substantial mark-up from a local dealer to fill the hole in their childhood collections.
     Now I am the holder of this recently "liberated" coin. I can only hope this find was more the result of an ungrateful heir/grandchild than that of a robbery because that happens too.

     I'm not used to seeing Wheat Cents with any, let alone all, of their original luster intact. I guess because they were never new for me. I always saw them toned. Indian Head Cents look weird to me too when uncirculated. I'm surprised I haven't seen more over the years since luster bearing Memorial Cents from even 1959 can still be found infrequently and commonly from the 1970s and '80s. Wheat Cents have just always been brown, even the mid-1980s when I first started collecting.

     But with that find, I can say now that it took just short of 9 years and 11 months to complete that set from circulation. From the outset I thought I would never see any of the 1943 steel cents; I was actually planning to overlook them and consider the set complete without them but then I found one in another person's till (1943-D) and so added them to the list. I thought they'd be the last ones I'd ever find but the steel cent set was finished in 2011 when I received a 1943-S in payment, and not from somebody who knew I was looking.
     I also discovered that if you check the magnet trap in a bank's coin counting machine, you can sometimes score a steel cent or two there as well but I didn't need to depend on this trick to get all three of the steel cents. Each one actually came from different customers over the years.

     Naturally the first full year, 2005, had the most finds. It broke down for the 51 date and mintmark combinations as follows and as you can see, it's the San Francisco dates overall which are the hardest to come by.
     San Francisco made coins have a certain allure with collectors as they were often the lowest mintage of any particular year:

2004: 4 [4, 47] - started off with 1942 on 12/26/04; 1944; 1953; and 1957-D
2005: 32 [36, 15] - highlight of this mess: got the 1943-D on 8/20/05
2006: 4 [40, 11] - 1941-D; 1942-D; 1944-D; 1944-S
2007: 3 [43, 8] - 1945-D; 1945-S; 1951-S
2008: 2 [45, 6] - got the 1943 on 2/28/08; the other find was 1952-S
2009: 0
2010: 3 [48, 3] - 1942-S; 1947-S; 1949-S
2011: 1 [49, 2] - got the 1943-S on 3/26/11
2012: 1 [50, 1] - this year's lone find was 1941-S
2013: 0
2014: 1 [51] - set completed with 1955-S on 11/20/14

     As of now, I have found every date and mintmark of the Lincoln Cent series from 1940 to present in circulation. I need only an example from 1915, 1931, and 1922-D to have completed a date set from circulation (i.e. one example from every year from any mint). That attempt has been ongoing since 2002.
     A twenty coin subset, 1934-1940 PDS, is what I am hoping to complete from circulation next. I need only seven more date and mintmark combinations to do so.
     The 1909-1933 subset I would say is impossible to complete from circulation anymore though I feel year representation is still achievable with enough time and coins to sort through. This is why it helps that I am a cashier...

     For other series, I need only two more coins to complete a set of Jefferson Nickels from circulation (1938-present), the 1939-D and 1944-S, and I have more than half the total set of silver Roosevelt Dimes (1946-1964) and Franklin Half-Dollars (1948-1963) as well.

      I wish me luck :-)